Tennessee Tech’s very first musical theater graduates will perform a landmark senior showcase this Sunday through a first-of-its-kind partnership with the Cumberland County Playhouse.
Cumberland County Playhouse Production Director and CEO Bryce McDonald said the free, one-night-only cabaret celebrates the four students graduating from the university’s new musical theater degree program. McDonald said the performance serves as the final evaluation for the students, who spent their last semester working as interns with the professional theater company.
“We have our first inaugural class of four graduates that will walk across the stadium on May 8th from Tennessee Tech with a brand new degree that Tech has never had in all of its amazing years of being a university,” McDonald said. “And to do that, they are part of our intern program. And we wanted to do a senior showcase with them because they would do one if they were just students in Tech, if they were just going to their normal classes they would have to do a student showcase that would be an evaluation. And so we offered to turn it into a cabaret experience.”
McDonald said the students spent three weeks rehearsing a setlist they curated themselves to reflect their personal journeys and career goals. The performance is divided into two 40-minute acts featuring a mix of opera, musical theater, and classic standards.
“In a cabaret setting like this, it really is their heart and their soul up there,” McDonald said. “So they’re writing their own dialogue, they’re writing their intros to the music, they’re writing their segues to connect songs together. In cabaret settings there’s a live element to it. Not that all theater isn’t live, but, you know, there’s a chance that something could go wrong, they could hit the wrong chord on the piano or they could start on the wrong note and are they’re telling a story and they get lost for a second. They’ll come back and be able to give that, you know, they can be a part of that.”
McDonald said the collaboration allows the university to provide students with professional workshops and evaluations while building the new degree program. The partnership requires students to complete a semester-long internship involving both production and performance work.
“One of the things that we’re so proud of with this partnership is that, you know, being a brand new program, they are smaller in their student body count for this program,” McDonald said. “And they have such an amazing opportunity to have these one-on-one, really intimate relationships with their professors that are helping them and guide them all the way by just giving them such detailed theory information and their musicality is really impressive.”
McDonald said the cabaret aims to change local perceptions about where students must go to receive high-quality musical theater training. He said the program allows residents of the Upper Cumberland to stay close to home while preparing for professional careers.
“I would tell you the people who come to see this are going to say, ‘They went to what school?’” McDonald said. “That’s what they’re going to say. They’re going to they’re really going to be impressed with what they’re about to hear. This program has really taken off in these four years that we’ve been involved and, you know, they did Godspell was one of their first big musicals, it got rave reviews and people were like, ‘Oh, we did job these people in the?’ No, these are students. They didn’t believe that.”
McDonald said the playhouse intends to make the senior showcase an annual event as the Tennessee Tech program continues to grow. He said the collaboration helps bridge the gap between Putnam and Cumberland counties through the arts.
“We just want people to know what is happening in our community,” McDonald said. “And that the Upper Cumberland has so much to offer from arts to outdoors recreation to education to entertainment to hiking to I mean, you name it, the Upper Cumberland has it and just to be able to showcase that also the education possibilities for the art of musical theater and song is happening in Putnam County in their backyard and in Cumberland County. And the two of them are trying to bridge the gap between the counties to show how strong we can be if we work together.”
The performance begins at 7:00 p.m. Sunday at the Cumberland County Playhouse with doors opening at 6:30 p.m.